"It wasn’t so many years ago that people assumed the Internet would make long magazine-style stories obsolete," writes Jonathan Mahler, of New York Times Magazine and Bloomberg, in a NYT op-ed. Yet desperate nostalgia for a "dying art," better online resolution and "the simple and honorable intention to preserve a particular kind of story ... with scenes and characters and a narrative arc" seem to have rescued long-form journalism. More than that, there now thrives what Mahler calls a "cult of long-form"--an intense reverence for length itself. "[S]tories are too often celebrated simply because they exist. And are long."
There is, I think, a certain academic prejudice at work here. If a piece is long, it follows that it must be thoughtful. If it's longer, it's deeply thoughtful; if it's unbearably long, it's brilliant. Of course there's no necessary alliance between length and insight, as any reading of, say, biblical parables or secular aphorisms quickly reveals. Nonetheless professionalism demands prolixity; only the unemployed scholar would competently say in 500 words what could drearily be said in 15,000. In the academic community, just as a PhD confers intelligence, prattling confers a powerful analysis.
Many fresh journalists hatch from this community, hauling the ancient professorial prejudice with them. In an undeniable way this is, for the eager long-form journalist, an immensely practical good. If an idea can be adequately "fleshed out" in 1,000 words but the editor requires 10,000, then the call goes forth for 9,000 words of sheer excess, something akin to smooth cocktail-party chatter--the much-vaunted and highly revered gift of gab.
Yet on rare occasion such "excess" is, for the reader, pure pleasure. I'd take 100,000 words of Proustian reminiscence over a 5,000-word magazine piece on human memory, any day, just as I'd avidly reread David Halberstam's thoroughly entertaining monograph on basketball, The Breaks of the Game--a sport I don't follow and know absolutely nothing about--before I'd read a Sports Illustrated piece of any length.
Because, at least to me, it is style that matters.
Jonathan Mahler says "the function--the purpose--of 'long-form'" is that of "allow[ing] a writer to delve into the true complexities of a story, and also to bring readers closer to the experience of other people." Yet the "true complexities" of most any story can be reduced to 500 words of bullet points--hence the pricelessness of the briefest of book reviews, which effectively relate in a few paragraphs what the weightiest of tomes often manage to intellectually murder in 900 pages.
On human behavior, twisted psychology and the eternal struggle for power, a mere 1,000-word piece rather poorly written can be a dreadful trial for the reader; yet all three volumes of Shakespeare's Henry VI are but an unblighted joy--and endlessly "informative" about human psychology.
Why? It's not the length or complexity of the thing. It's the style.
As long as I have functioned as a reader I have admired an economy of words especially in expository writing. Lord knows that I exist in a working environment where this is not valued. Where reports are chargeable by the word and ten are never used where a hundred might serve. I started writing letters to the editor and then blog comments to learn how to explain my own thinking in a concise and persuasive way. Excruciatingly long and dull reports I had mastered. There is no joy in that at all. But when you write something pithy, persuasive yet entertaining you get a bit of a rush. I know you know what I mean Mr Carpenter. It shows.
Posted by: Peter G | January 25, 2014 at 02:25 PM